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Rick Perry's campaign may be sidetracked by the Trans-Texas Corridor

“His plan was meant to be bold, get one’s imagination working, and it turned out to look scary to people,” said Matt Dellinger, author of “Interstate 69,” which details the fight over the Trans-Texas Corridor.

County toll authorities in Dallas and Houston complained the state was forcing them into contracts with private companies, while voters began calling their legislators to repeal the law. As Dellinger wrote for Transportationnation.org, David and Linda Stall, a Republican couple from Fayetteville, Texas, formed a group called CorridorWatch.org, which held meetings across the state about the details of the plan and whipped up outrage.

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Environmental groups objected to the wildlife being lost, and farmers turned on the former state agriculture commissioner, calling it an abuse of eminent domain.

“It would have claimed a lot of farm and ranch ground — some of the best in farm and ranch country in the entire state,” said Jim Sartwelle, director of public policy for the Texas Farm Bureau.

Perry’s decision to award development rights to a Spanish company, Cintra, only tapped into anxieties about immigration, free trade and border security. Conspiracy theorists dubbed it the “NAFTA Superhighway” and protested the alleged plot to dissolve the nation’s borders.

And voters cried foul when it came out that one of Perry’s top aides, Dan Shelley, worked for Cintra until three months before the company was selected for the state road project. When Shelley left the governor’s office, he signed a lucrative lobbying contract with Cintra.

But, as Dellinger wrote, the Perry administration held its ground. Texas Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson, one of Perry’s closest advisers and friends, frequently intoned, “There is no road fairy.”

“We either build toll roads, slow roads or no roads,” Perry said in 2007.

Ultimately, the uproar forced state officials to scale back the proposal. In 2007, the Legislature dealt a blow to the main tenant of the corridor by placing a moratorium on public-private toll partnerships. In 2009, Perry’s Transportation Department officially killed it off with a “no build” recommendation on the corridor’s first segment, which was being handled by Cintra.

It was one of the most controversial issues of Perry’s gubernatorial career — yet he emerged from the fight relatively unscathed.

Greenwire explained the turn of events: During his 2006 reelection, there wasn’t a strong Republican challenger to bring up the Trans-Texas Corridor. Perry, who continued to support the corridor, won the four-way general election with 39 percent of the vote.

During his 2010 gubernatorial fight, Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison aired a biting attack ad accusing Perry of tolling roads for the benefit of foreign companies. Hutchison lost, and while the Democratic nominee, then-Houston Mayor Bill White, also ran an attack ad on the project, Perry won easily.

By the recent midterm election, the issue was too old to cause much damage. Yet tea party activists were still vocally hesitant at what they viewed as the government’s big private-land grab.

Will it damage Perry’s national ambitions?

“Rick Perry talks a good game about getting government out of your life, but if there’s any utility at all for him to put government in your life, you’ve got government in your life,” said Leland Beatty, who worked for Perry’s agriculture predecessor Jim Hightower.

Hall fumes that some public-private partnerships are still alive and well in Texas — even if the corridor project is dead. “There are all these sweetheart deals for all his corporate cronies,” she said.

Meanwhile, others have forgiven.

“Were there disagreements in the middle of the process? Certainly,” said Sartwelle. “But it never happened. The bottom line is it never happened.”

Kirby Brown of the Texas Wildlife Association insisted that “the governor got bad advice.” But he admitted, “There’s no question, we have members who are still mad about it, and they didn’t like the way it played out.”

Dellinger offered this defense: “I could see Perry’s eventual answer being like his HPV response: ‘My heart was in right place, but I went about it all wrong.’”

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story story drew on reporting from Greenwire, author Matt Dellinger and Transportationnation.org without proper attribution. POLITICO regrets the omission. More information is available here.

"Nearly half of the state’s major highways are congested, and one-third of its major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers."

Every year I drive from Houston to California and Texas has the best roads in the Southwest. Texas major cities are conjested, but no more that any other big city in our country and certainly nothing like LA or SF.

Perry's entire campaign is becoming one Texas- headache. Maybe the now-dead project wouldn't rile tea party Republicans so much if it didn't look as though Perry had tried to build the world's broadest highway all the way to Mexico. Maybe voters in general wouldn't be so riled over the project if Perry hadn't abused eminent domain powers or relied on crony capitalism or foreign investors/managers, but Perry did all of the above. It's the Republican way. Hoosiers are still upset that Mitch Daniels and the Republican-dominated legislature of Indiana passed a bill that has given 75 years of management rights of a toll road under construction to not fellow Hoosiers and not even to fellow Americans but to foreign investors. It's called privatization and the Republicans love it; they sell off parts of America to their cronies or the highest foreign bidder.

The liberal media is really scraping bottom with their stories on Rick Perry.

The guy is the Governor of the state of Texas, when you are successful in creating the majority of new jobs and people are moving to your state in great numbers you need to consider infrastructure upgrades (Not the Obama union payback type of upgrades).

The strongest objection to building the Trans-Texas Corridor appears to have been the taking of prime Texas farmland by eminent domain and, to a lesser extent, the awarding of the contract to a Spanish company. The objections might have been mitigated if the owners of the land had been offered royalties as is done with oil leases rather than eminent domain. Spain has a world wide reputation for building rail systems, but another company or consortium could have been picked. Americans have lost sight of the fact that Mexico is one of the top ten largest economies in the world, one of the largest oil producers, and a prime partner for a modern trade route. Think about the role that Roman roads played in the world of the Roman Empire.

This actually isn't an example of the MSM ganging up on Perry. If the media is liberal, then they would have no problem with eminent domain and infrastructure spending. That's all they talk about on msnbc these days. This story is only a negative with the tea party crowd. And let's be honest - Perry's losing tea party support all by himself. No outside assistance needed.

Figures one of the things I might agree with Perry on, he's lambasted by his own party and especially the Tea Party. What I don't get about the overall objection is why oppose essential infrastructure investment? If you're a small government populist and oppose essential infrastructure development then what should government do?

Don't need the smarmy answer that "less (no) government is the best government". Government is best suited for giant projects that benefit all and certainly commerce.

Yeah overzealous eminent domain is not a good thing, but it is necessary sometimes with fair compensation. Offering a Spanish contractor the job to build the railroad part of the project might be politically incorrect but we've outsourced our railroad industrial infrastructure. We're in the position of needing to do what the Chinese do, invite multi-national contractors (like GE is doing with Aerospace), work with them and most importantly learn from them. It's sad that the USA is in that position but that's the brutal reality of it.

You can call it what you may but it was a HUGE land grab and multi-national scam on citizens of Texas in order to line the pockets of his big-money backers with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction contracts...Perry is a CROOK!